More than forty-eight hours into the Grave's opening, at the far north-western edge of the realm, Qin Yihua sat in meditation.

  There, atop the root of the great, invasive tree that penetrated the Earth Dragon's Grave, he sat facing the very edge of the realm, taking in the thin wisps of Qi that flowed in from the unknown space beyond.

  Although the volume of External Qi that could be gathered here was minuscule, and in the hands of an unskilled or incompatible Cultivator, it would be of little use.

  But, within Qin Yihua's body, those minuscule wisps of Wood-aspected External Qi bloomed, expressing their energies as he transformed them into his own Wind-aspected Internal Qi.

  Like opening the window of a sealed room, fresh air spilled into his Dantian through those drops of Wood Qi, imparting vigor and purity the likes of which couldn't be obtained through traditional Cultivation.

  It was like seeing a glimpse of a realm of Cultivation far, far beyond his current state.

  Interrupting the peace of his Cultivation, a tremor ran through the root beneath him, and the echo of a great rumbling rushed over him.

  Turning to face the direction of the rumbling, Qin Yihua looked towards the northern biome's cauldron of fire. He saw nothing of great note there, beyond a disturbance among the many Magical Beasts that crowded the pillars.

  "...What could have caused such an impact…?" To him, it didn't seem like something a beast could have done, certainly nothing in this realm, even the mutant beast in the center of the Grave couldn't have evoked such a rumbling in the earth.

  "A natural event, perhaps?" Unable to rid himself of unease so quickly, Qin Yihua continued to gaze towards the cauldron with skepticism, until, finally, a subtle abnormality drew his attention.

  "Hmm? Was there always such a large gap between the pillars there…?"

  … … … … … …

  In the fetid pit at the bottom of the cauldron, Jun Li had wrapped a cloth around her face, saturated with the liquified remains of a melted medicinal plant, one of little value, simply so she might experience a more tolerable scent for a time.

  Looking around, Jun Li saw that the pillar she had brought down a moment ago was now scattered far and wide across the base of the cauldron, the incredible height of the pillar now having been converted to countless stone oases, capable of insulating Jun Li from the sludge of rotten blood and flesh below.

  Jun Li felt nauseous, and took in haggard breaths, her hand pressing the damp fabric closer over her face. 'Damn… that Technique is still way too dangerous to use in combat, even here I almost blew my arms off…'

  It wasn't only the disgusting sludge that caused Jun Li to feel like vomiting, but also the sensation of deep exertion, the likes of which felt as though her guts had been scooped out, leaving a hollow in her abdomen that drew bile up to her throat.

  "Not done yet…" Her eyes trailing the pattern in which the pillar had fallen and shattered, Jun Li carefully sought the 'end' of the pillar for her true prize.

  "There…!" Jun Li quickly gathered her strength and used the Glass Cloud Art to skate across the sludge, quickly closing in on her target.

  Dozens of meters away, a large bear-like beast was struggling to climb up the side of a broken shard of the pillar it had been resting on, its legs thrashing about in the sludge for decent footing.

  "Today's 'main ingredient…!'" On high alert after its fall, the beast noticed Jun Li quickly, but hurt and confused as it was from landing on the rubble, it struggled to muster a compelling defense, simply roaring at Jun Li and rearing up, as if to make a threat.

  "Collapsing Echo Fist - Returning Force!" Without slowing for an instant, Jun Li crashed into the beast's torso, burying her fist so deeply into its chest that even her wrist disappeared into the beast's fur.

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  The moment Jun Li crashed into the beast, its arms came snapping down over her like a sprung trap, claws running over her body with the strength and sharpness to shred through her robe and skin both.

  But Jun Li didn't move an inch. Or, more accurately, she couldn't. From her back to her nape, shredded cloth and skin parted in strips to reveal a glint of silver beneath, a solid layer of metal that had stopped the beast's claws from so much as perforating Jun Li's facia.

  Her entire body was held in place as if a single solid ingot, paralyzed by her own design. 'Now drop dead…'

  In just three short breaths, the force Jun Li implanted in the beast's torso recoiled with the force of an explosion, flesh and fur rippling out from the center of the beast's chest as the creature vomited blood like a grotesque fountain, its core ground to dust in its own body.

  Before it could entirely fall back into the sludge, Jun Li moved forward once again, her self-imposed paralysis fading away on command, leaving only a buzzing numbness that surrounded her senses.

  Grabbing the beast by the jaw, Jun Li kept it from falling entirely into the sludge. 'Just a few moments… and the easy part will be over…' Dragging the corpse behind her, Jun Li found a foothold and pulled the beast's body up and onto a segment of the fallen pillar.

  Allowing it to lie limp behind her, Jun Li pulled an old weapon from her Spatial Ring, low quality and chipped, but sturdily built, enough for her purposes, at least.

  Raising the old, heavy saber above her head, Jun Li thrust it down into the stone repeatedly, breaking away large shards of stone with each thrust.

  For multiple minutes, Jun Li worked away at the stone, haggardly breathing the foul air, the taste of which couldn't be hidden even with the aromatics in her face mask.

  Eventually, Jun Li managed to carve out an oblong nook, a concave in the stone just large enough for her to rest her entire body within.

  Dragging the corpse of the bear-like beast over to the dip in the stone, Jun Li pulled out her new saber and ran it over the beast's neck. "Whoa…" Jun Li was startled for a moment as she made the cut; the blade ran so easily through flesh and bone that she nearly decapitated the beast entirely by accident.

  "I guess that's how good a Peak Mortal Grade treasure really is…" Jun Li felt annoyed at herself for enduring the unfamiliarity and using it in her brief fight against Guan Heng, but the sight of the smoothly flowing blood quickly lifted her mood once more.

  "Good… I crushed the core, so some of that energy should have leeched into the blood…" Once the stone nook was almost filled, Jun Li shoved the beast's corpse aside, allowing it to slide off the broken pillar and into the sludge.

  Sitting down, Jun Li quickly pulled a Pill Furnace from her Spatial Ring and began making a batch of pills, using some of the resources she had gathered in the Grave's western marsh.

  These pills, designed to create a chaotic, poisonous energy, were not intended to be consumed normally. Instead, she formed them in such a way that they would crumble apart and dissolve in water, a method that was well established among alchemists due to the popularity of medicinal baths.

  "So slow…" Jun Li clicked her tongue and pulled an Elixir Cauldron out of her Spatial Ring, setting it down in her lap, tossing a half-dozen medicinal plants inside while she worked on her pills.

  Within a few seconds, she was simultaneously working on two items. A batch of poisonous pills and an antidotal elixir. The medicinal plants used were potent and would command a high price outside of the Earth Dragon's Grave. But even so, Jun Li felt a bit of frustration.

  If Jun Li's effort had been a perfect fifty out of fifty, these resources would only reach a mark of thirty-five out of fifty, cementing her Viscera Tempering as imperfect, a sub-par result that would have to remain as such for a long time.

  Within a few minutes, Jun Li could see that the residual heat the pillar had absorbed from the flames above had begun to saturate the blood, letting it run thinner.

  It aligned well with the timing of Jun Li's work, and she quickly opened her Pill Furnace, tipping the batch of completed pills into her hand, where she swiftly minced them into a powder, before throwing the remains into the blood.

  Returning the Pill Furnace to her Spatial Ring, Jun Li stood up and tore the tattered remains of her robes off her body, alongside her facemask, allowing them to drift through the air, down to the sludge.

  Across her bare body, strips of burned flesh from her fall could be seen, along with flayed skin, hanging loosely off her back after her short encounter with the bear-like beast.

  Stepping down into the pool of steaming blood, Jun Li's expression tightened as pain shot through her wound, intensifying further with each inch she descended. 'Endure… the hard part hasn't even started yet…'

  Lying back in the bath of blood, Jun Li opened her mouth to the poisoned blood until she had filled her stomach with the vile liquid. Sitting up, she endured the intense nausea with gritted teeth and reached out to scoop up her Elixir Cauldron, eagerly feeling the intense heat of the metal between her palms.

  The poison would tear into her organs, damaging her viscera from the inside out, so that she could refine them from the very deepest foundations. The technique was indescribably brutal, and even though many alchemists were familiar with it, nearly none would ever partake in such a method.

  'Seventy-two hours… I just have to endure, and ration this antidote as well as I can…'